Thursday, December 6, 2007

Whose Calendar Is It Anyway?

Hi everyone. I’m pleased that the CatalystOffice buzz is getting stronger. We asked bloggers around the web to review our software and I like what I am hearing.

Here’s one excerpt from Jennifer Chait, at www.OfficeStuffer.com:

“The [C]ontact[s] section (in CatalystOffice) was so much better than Outlook. However, remember I am biased because I already dislike Outlook. Still, in Outlook you have to click on a section and then a box comes up which may or may not fit the address you type. Here there was simply one basic add contact section and in the popup box you could add everything all at once – no more clicks. Ah, ease of use. Awesome.”

Please check out the links on the right, for more blog news.

One of my favorite aspects of CatalystOffice is the Calendar. Building an enterprise-grade calendar is not an easy feat. Microsoft had a team of programmers working for about 8 years to create their calendar, and it’s still not as feature-rich as most small business software users would like. I think it was really important at the beginning of our development process to identify what calendar-related issues small business owners said were important to them. For example:

  • Most small business owners are on the go, so an ideal calendar would remind you about appointments via desktop, email or text message
  • Small business owners often mix work with family, and there was a demand for multiple calendars – a public one for business appointments and a private one to remind you about your daughter’s piano recital
  • You want to delete future meetings in a series of meetings that have been canceled but still retain a record of past meetings
  • Business owners feel that privacy is important, and they might want an intern for example to add new calendar items without being able to view the entire calendar

Do any of these sound like your concerns? If you haven’t yet tried out CatalystOffice, why not try it for three months free? Visit www.catalystweb.com. And keep your questions coming.

-Bob